WORDS MIGHT LEAD TO MISUNDERSTANDING IN CROSS-CULTURAL SETTINGS. WHAT ARE OTHER ALTERNATIVES IN WITH CONFLICT SITUATION?

It is important to take into account that words represent only a 35%[1] of our total communication; therefore understanding all others aspects that can play a significant role when dealing or interacting with different people is so relevant if avoiding misunderstandings is the goal. Multiples issues such as the tone; the posture; the gesture and look, could send all kinds of messages such as calm, aggressiveness, scare, kindness, tendered, mostly all felling; and affect the way how people perceived us. When dealing with a conflict situation it is key managing all these features; it is proved that a smile, a gentile tone and body movements, keeping away from speaking loud; looking directly into the other person face, to name some, could modify other people attitudes towards us. Keeping politeness, serenity even in a hard situation, when face to face confrontation is produce, helps to generate the same behavior in the other, as it was the case of Alvaro Uribe Velez in the “Cumbre de Unasur en Republica Dominicana” with Hugo Chavez, the Colombian President was so prudent that was capable to shake the Venezuelan president hand, despite his insults.

When dealing with cross-cultural setting is vital understanding customs, history, behaves, manners of the person with are speaking with, knowing what food, drink, sport, famous artists of the country where the person is from it is also helpful in order to create, improve or a relation. When solving a conflict, ambience also plays a key role, colors, ventilation and furniture must be properly according to the situation; having for example light colors such as white, light green, cream generate a felling of peaceful and relaxation even for the eyes. A right ventilation and furniture could avoid having distraction of thoughts, and losses of focus even awaking feeling of discomfort that affect people behavior towards the conversation. As a conclusion it could be said that when people are interacting in conflictive circumstances there are external aspects that could be handle with the objective to don’t let the entire solution base on verbal communication only, especially because on cross cultural settings dialects, some works in certain languages could be taken in the wrong way.

Fuente imagen: http://www.maestrosdelweb.com/editorial/herramientas-y-ejemplos-para-mejorar-tu-trabajo-como-freelance/

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[1] http://petermjfitzgerald.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/nonverbal-communication/

DIFFERENTIATED STRATEGIES WHEN REACHING FOREIGN MARKETS.

Convergence and divergence are two theories that had taken more relevance after World War II, they explain different approaches of how crossing international borders are occurring and affecting business, culture, economy, etc. the fist one stands for the global village, referring to the increasing sharing characteristic among nations, it stand that it will be a point when we will even have a global language English; on the other side divergence carry on and refers to cultures  uniqueness and diversity, it meant the resistance to change because the core values are not modified easily . I think that even in our times where globalization is a reality and interconnection in political, economical, military, environmental, cultural issues, etc. among countries around the world is growing and it’s stronger day by day. It is important to recognize that each region and culture keeps having really unique characteristics that identify a particular territory; values, symbols, beliefs, customs, etc. still plays a significant role in each one.

Despite multinationals are around the world and sell the same products in each place; they way how they sell it, it’s what is different; companies expends large quantities of money making research of certain markets, because they had understood the importance of properly perception and sensitivity of each place and ethnicity. Here is mention some of the companies that apply this:

• McDonalds, for example sell happy meals, and big macs all around, but it doesn’t do it in the same way, even if the essence of its business in enrolled in similar attributes, there are lightly but significant differences in each country; for example in Germany they sells a combo curry (famous sausage there); in Colombia there are a large amount of sauces for free, while in Europe you pay them.
• Red Bull for example introduce a different can, logo and characteristic of the product in china, there red bull is not blue and silver; but it’s a chubby can, in yellow and red colors, without gas and with vitamins. The company was aware of the importance of these colors for that culture, and applied on its products a different methodology to introduce it.
•  Cars companies such Nissan and Toyota are aware of the importance of symbols, and significance of certain words for each languages, that’s why Moco car has not been introduced in Colombia. In order to reduce mistakes and have positives approaches, names are changed or modify when penetrating an specific market; numbers had result in a good way to avoid failures in marketing.

Image source: http://www.tcnj.edu/~darakjy2/globalization.jpg  

http://www.redbull.com

http://www.redbull.com.cn/e/cp.htm /